RRND Email Full Text (Scheduled)

  • Jeffries warns Democrats might not support FISA reauthorization if Patel remains atop FBI

    Source: The Hill

    “House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) is warning that House Democrats might not back an extension of the government’s warrantless spy powers as long as FBI Director Kash Patel remains atop the agency. Jeffries has long portrayed Patel as a partisan conspiracy theorist who’s unfit to be the nation’s top cop. On Thursday, he escalated those criticisms by suggesting Democrats might be ready to leverage their support for an extension of Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) to secure Patel’s removal. … The remarks create what is potentially another barrier in the effort to extend FISA’s spying powers, which expire on April 30. Already, many Democrats — joined by some Republicans — are vowing to oppose the legislation unless it’s amended to include stronger privacy protections for U.S. citizens.” (04/23/26)

    https://thehill.com/homenews/house/5845476-jeffries-democrats-fisa-patel/

  • DOJ watchdog launches probe into compliance with Epstein files law

    Source: CBS News

    “The Justice Department’s Office of the Inspector General said in a statement that it will ‘evaluate the DOJ’s processes for identifying, redacting, and releasing records in its possession as required by the’ Epstein Files Transparency Act, which President Trump signed into law last November. The bill required the Justice Department to release all files related to Epstein and his co-conspirator Ghislaine Maxwell within 30 days of becoming law, a deadline the department failed to meet. … The rolling release and repeated publishing and unpublishing of documents left survivors and members of Congress alike calling for an independent review of the department’s handling of the files. The two lawmakers who led the push to pass the Epstein Files Transparency Act, Democratic Rep. Ro Khanna and Republican Rep. Thomas Massie, have also pushed for an independent review.” (04/23/26)

    https://www.cbsnews.com/news/epstein-files-justice-department-inspector-general/

  • UT: Four people accuse Salt Lake City council member, congressional candidate, of unwanted sexual advances

    Source: Salt Lake Tribune

    “Four people from Utah political circles — three of them elected officials — accuse Eva Lopez Chavez, a Salt Lake City Council member and Democratic congressional candidate, of restraining them during what they considered unwanted sexual advances. Lopez Chavez, through attorney Greg Skordas, said nothing ‘inappropriate’ occurred during her interactions with three of the people and the fourth alleged contact ‘never occurred.’ … Victoria Petro, who is Lopez Chavez’s fellow City Council member; Maggie Regier, who worked on Stan Penfold’s mayoral campaign in 2019; Hoang Nguyen, who is now a state representative; and Jen Plumb, now a state senator, described their allegations in interviews with The Salt Lake Tribune. Each person said their allegations arose in social settings before Lopez Chavez joined the City Council in 2023.” (04/23/26)

    https://www.sltrib.com/news/politics/2026/04/22/four-women-accuse-salt-lake-city/


  • There’s a Simple Way to End the Gerrymander Wars

    Source: Garrison Center
    by Thomas L Knapp

    “The absolute BEST way to end the gerrymander wars would be to abolish Congress (and the rest of the US government). I’m all for it, but I sense I’m in the minority on that suggestion. There’s an easier — or at least simpler — way to get it done, while still catering to the fantasy that it’s possible for a politician to ‘represent’ the rights and interests of the diverse populations who elect him or her. It’s a two-step process: First, Congress repeals the Uniform Congressional District Act. Second, each state goes from ‘single-member district’ elections to ‘at-large statewide’ elections with Ranked Choice Voting.” (04/23/26)

    https://thegarrisoncenter.org/archives/20552

  • ChatGPT Confessed to a Crime It Couldn’t Possibly Have Committed

    Source: The Intercept
    by Radley Balko

    “You might spend your Saturday mornings sipping coffee, attending a kids’ soccer game, or just recovering from a tough week at work. Not Paul Heaton. He recently spent a weekend persuading ChatGPT to confess to a crime it didn’t commit. … In his exchange with ChatGPT, Heaton used the Reid technique, the confrontational interrogation method first developed in the 1950s that has since been adopted by police departments all over the country. The man for whom it’s named, John Reid, published his methodology after winning acclaim for getting a man named Darrel Parker to confess to raping and murdering his own wife — an origin story with a haunting twist. It worked. … One of the problems with the Reid technique is that its primary function isn’t to gather evidence and generate leads, it’s to extract a confession from the person police already believe committed the crime.” (04/23/26)

    https://theintercept.com/2026/04/23/chatgpt-ai-false-confession-interrogation-crime/

  • To Stop Endless War in Iran and Beyond, Congress Should Rescind the Money To Fight

    Source: Antiwar.com
    by David Vine

    “Trump’s embrace of endless wars already has killed and injured tens of thousands, displaced millions, squandered tens of billions of taxpayer dollars, driven up prices on gas and other necessities, created a global economic crisis, and risked wider catastrophe and World War III. And don’t forget Trump’s genocidal threats to ‘wipe out’ Iranian civilization, implying a potential nuclear attack. Faced with the threat of more endless war in Iran and beyond, Congress must do everything in its power to stop Trump. One tool Congress hasn’t used is its power to immediately cut off money for wars in Iran and beyond. With constitutional authority over government spending, Congress can use its rescission power – that is, the power to rescind, or take back, money previously appropriated to government agencies.” (04/23/26)

    https://original.antiwar.com/david-vine/2026/04/22/to-stop-endless-war-in-iran-and-beyond-congress-should-rescind-the-money-to-fight/

  • The Next Food Pyramid: Lab-Grown Meat and the New Moral Orthodoxy

    Source: Ludwig von Mises Institute
    by Thiago VS Coelho

    “The Good Food Institute openly says it works with governments to advocate public investment in alternative proteins, while New Harvest says that ‘publicly-funded groups like ours’ are needed to steer cellular agriculture toward the public good. By GFI’s own 2024 policy report, governments were estimated to disburse about $560 million on alternative proteins in 2024, with cultivated meat alone drawing $84 million in public investment that year, double the previous high. In the United States, USDA already put a historic $10 million grant into Tufts’[s] National Institute for Cellular Agriculture, where the research agenda includes consumer acceptance, willingness-to-pay, scalable cell lines, serum-free media, scaffolds, and process optimization. That is not a picture of a market proving itself. It is a picture of advocates trying to socialize the cost of proving whether a market exists.” (04/23/26)

    https://mises.org/mises-wire/next-food-pyramid-lab-grown-meat-and-new-moral-orthodoxy

  • Medical Marijuana Rescheduling Is Legally Puzzling but a “Huge Win” for Patients, Suppliers, and Scientists

    Source: Reason
    by Jacob Sullum

    “Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche’s distinction between medical and recreational cannabis is hard to reconcile with the relevant scientific and statutory criteria.” (04/23/26)

    https://reason.com/2026/04/23/medical-marijuana-rescheduling-is-legally-puzzling-but-a-huge-win-for-patients-suppliers-and-scientists/

  • This Is What Democracy Looks Like, and Why Our Founding Fathers Didn’t Create One

    Source: Town Hall
    by Derek Hunter

    “Virginia voted, and the Democrats treated the Republicans and Independents in the state like Bill Clinton treated so many women over the years – forcing their will on everyone else. If southern and rural Virginians didn’t want to be overpowered into submission, they shouldn’t have worn such a short skirt. In an election decided by three points after last year’s Governor’s race was won by the Democrat by more than 15 points, Democrats switched the state’s Congressional district map from six Democrats and five Republicans to 10 Democrats. Hitler would be proud. This is why we are a Constitutionally Limited Republic and not a democracy.” (04/23/26)

    https://townhall.com/columnists/derekhunter/2026/04/23/this-is-what-democracy-looks-like-and-why-our-founding-fathers-didnt-create-one-n2674916

  • Trump’s extended ceasefire shows his desperation to exit his failed Iran war — but he doesn’t know how

    Source: Philadelphia Inquirer
    by Trudy Rubin

    “In 1966, the famous American psychologist Abraham Maslow came up with a description of a mental bias that became known as ‘Maslow’s hammer.’ ‘If the only tool you have is a hammer, I suppose it is tempting to treat everything as if it were a nail,’ Maslow contended. Or, as some have reworded his theorem: When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. This is a good diagnosis for how President Donald Trump has trapped us all in his unnecessary war with Tehran. A war from which he can’t find a good exit.” (04/23/26)

    https://www.inquirer.com/opinion/iran-war-trump-strait-hormuz-ceasefire-weak-deal-20260423.html

  • The hidden cost of simplicity: Procurement reform’s fragmentation problem

    Source: Niskanen Center
    by Jacob Brown

    “There’s broad bipartisan agreement that the federal government pays too much for goods and services yet procurement timelines remain far too slow. Over the past year, the Trump administration has been working on the ‘Revolutionary FAR Overhaul’ (RFO), described in an executive order as an effort to ‘create the most agile, effective, and efficient procurement system possible.’ To achieve this, the EO directs an overhaul of the Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) and agency supplements so that they contain ‘only provisions required by statute or essential to sound procurement.’ So far, the administration has succeeded in making provisional changes to the FAR, which many agencies have adopted.” (04/23/26)

    https://www.niskanencenter.org/the-hidden-cost-of-simplicity-procurement-reforms-fragmentation-problem

  • How Iran Committed Suicide

    Source: American Greatness
    by Victor Davis Hanson

    “How does the supposedly most fearsome regime in the violent Middle East now find itself on the verge of an utter economic and military collapse? Iran’s half-century-long deadly terrorist reputation peaked with the October 7, 2023, massacre in Israel that it helped fund and coordinate. Iran’s terrorist ambitions of running the Middle East had accelerated after witnessing Joe Biden’s cognitive decline and his administration’s distancing itself from Israel. Biden’s humiliation by a series of Chinese slights and the Russian invasion of Ukraine further eroded American deterrence. European appeasement was another force multiplier of Iranian hubris.” [editor’s note: And yet somehow the mighty US hasn’t decisively defeated them – TLK] (04/23/26)

    https://amgreatness.com/2026/04/23/how-iran-committed-suicide/

  • Two Cheers for Abundance Liberalism

    Source: The Volokh Conspiracy
    by Ilya Somin

    “This emerging school of thought has its flaws. But it’s a potentially valuable ally for libertarians and other free market advocates.” (04/23/26)

    https://reason.com/volokh/2026/04/23/two-cheers-for-abundance-liberalism/